


we'll have all the time in the world

by runrabbitt



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: First Love, M/M, Second person POV, Tsukishima Kei is Bad at Feelings, and so is kuroo, letting go, mainly just a story of them falling in love, right person, slightly wrong time, two lovesick idiots really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26367160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runrabbitt/pseuds/runrabbitt
Summary: they both fall in love at different times but one day they'll love each other in synchronicity.maybe not now, but hopefully in a few years.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 12
Kudos: 71





	we'll have all the time in the world

**Author's Note:**

> not a new story! just edited it and added something new :p
> 
> hi! ah ha ha, let's not talk about how my other account was deleted. shush, that's a secret for us ;) anyways i hope you enjoy!

It starts off like this—you meet a boy when you’re only sixteen. He stands over you with the posture of a boy who will always have two more years on you. He smiles and he laughs because he knows it too.

He knows it in the flecks of your golden eyes, reflecting an image of everything he wants to be right back at him, when you stare so beautifully into his softened gaze.

You don’t know it, but the way that he’s looking at you? He’s asking you to fall in love with him. Maybe not now, hopefully in a few years, but regardless. It would be a privilege to fall in love with everything about you. 

He lets you go when he’s eighteen and the love in his chest turns from the yearning warmth in the pit of his stomach to a gaping hole in his heart. The golden flecks in your eyes haunt him when he watches you leave in that worn down bus.

It’s okay, because you’ve made a promise.

You’ll meet each other again, but instead of the smell of the dusty, humid Tokyo air and secret promises, it’ll be accompanied with the smell of pine sol and certain victory for either side.

The fact that he let you go doesn’t make it hurt any less. Such little time to fall for someone, but somehow he did. Don’t worry—he’s not completely in love with you _just_ yet. He’s far too young, and it’s still far too early for him to think that.

It hurts though, and he carries it with every aching step and every twist of his torso that drives the shards of longing further in his heart.

Oh, his heart. Please, if you have any, have mercy on his poor heart. 

You really are cruel sometimes. You still pretend to be oblivious to your own feelings because you’re so hopeless with noticing his.

With every block, you hear him whispering in the back of your mind. It’s his words that drive you. It’s that stupid smile that you see on his lips whenever you shut someone down.

It’s him, every step of the way, even when you don’t want to walk anymore. 

He won’t contact you until you finally break and ask Hinata for his number. He _let you go,_ and that means letting you grow at your own pace. He can be cruel too, but he’s not cruel enough to steal this away from you.

You have to learn what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you. You have to learn what it’s like to have your heart broken by someone who told you they loved you. You have to learn every inch of the labyrinth of your heart. You have to learn it all by yourself, because he doesn’t want to be your teacher for something like that.

He’s eighteen, and eighteen holds responsibilities that you have yet to understand. He learns something too; he’s learning how to move on in life. He’s going to shed the facade of life-or-death volleyball matches, teenage-boy-antics that leave adrenaline in his veins, and his steadfast heart roaring in his ears.

He’s going to leave behind the memory of your dazzling eyes soon, because it’s not something that nineteen-year-olds bring with them.

You get left behind in the whirlwinds of your sixteen-year-old life. You figure that it was just you, mistaking your feelings for admiration. Admiration for that boy with mischief in his eyes and a penchant for making you overthink everything. Admiration for his sun kissed skin that’s riddled with faded scars and one too many bruises. 

Yes, it was you mistaking everything. 

At least, you _think_ that everything was a mistake, until you meet him again; this time on opposing sides and ferocity in both your eyes. In his words are little ways to shake you, get you off your game.

No, he’s saying that so whenever you remember that moment, you think of him. You remember him in all of his fire, in all his passion. You remember the way that the fluorescent lights make his eyes glow and you think that nothing has ever been as _brilliant_ as him.

You remember him at his best, because that’s all he wants you to think of him as.

You don't realize this when he comes up to you, breathless and shoulders slumped with defeat. Instead you wonder why he's still smiling like he's won the whole damn tournament.

He doesn't have the courage to explain that the only reason he is, is because it’s _you_. It’s you that he lost to, it’s you that he spent so long trying to evoke any kind of emotion from. It’s you that he told himself he would never be wrong about.

It’s you. 

He’s holding out his hand―it’s shaking from all the adrenaline, but more so out of his unequivocal pride for you. He’s never been more content with losing because every word you breathe after, will be marked with victory.

When you lean in, you smell the Tokyo air again and it’s exactly how you remembered. He reminds you of just how hard you’ve worked to get there.

Each callous on his hand speaks to your own, telling you that you’re like him now.

You have that passion within you too. 

You thank him. You thank him for not taking it easy on you, and he says that he has too much faith in your abilities to do that anyway. You thank him for never giving up on you, and he jokes that all he did was insult you. You thank him for making him work so hard that the lactic acid in your muscles makes you feel heavy and he laughs.

He laughs and you realize that you are sorely unmistaken. 

He laughs because your dazzling eyes are back and he realizes that you’re looking at him the way he looks at you— rather, the way he _used_ to look at you.

He doesn’t let go yet. He’s still trying to learn every inch of your clammy palms. He’s trying to match up your crooked fingers with his, like a jigsaw puzzle come to life.

He doesn’t want to let go, because he knows that once your hands leave his, he really will have to let you go again. 

But he has to…again, because he’s moving on from all of this, and he can’t handle the thought of leaving you behind once he finally has you. So, he savors it now. He holds it dearly in his shattered heart, held together by the memory of your molten gold eyes.

The look in your eyes now is something new, and it’s something that he can’t afford to bring with him when he turns nineteen. 

So time resumes, and he lets go. You do too, but your hand is still outstretched because there’s a fading hope that he’ll come back again.

He does not.

Not in his old, obvious ways with an arm draped around your shoulder or his finger tapping on the sides of your glasses. But in his new eighteen-year-old way that, again, you could never hope to understand till you’re in his shoes. Maybe not now you don’t, but someday soon because without him you’ll feel older than the years gone by.

You leave him behind again with the promise that you’ll win it all— _for him_ , even if you won’t say it out loud. You don’t in the end, but you won the only match that mattered to you, so in a way, you did.

Still, there’s something in you that hates the way your team falls apart around you. You blame yourself―one stupid leg cramp, and you’re gone. How absolutely useless. You are supposed to be the reliable teammate, the one that’s always there but thrives in the background.

You are supposed to be like him, but you aren’t him.

You aren't him but you try—you’re trying so hard to be like him. If you can’t, who else could you dream of being? 

He’s there for you again, because he knows the feeling. He’s there for you through that crackly speakerphone that doesn’t hold nearly as much emotion.

He’s there for you even miles away, because he loves you too much to disappear completely.

The lilt in his voice is enough to make you finally, _finally_ break down. The gentle soothing noises that barely translate through the phone are the only things you can hear over the sounds of your pitiful gasping for air. 

He tells you that you did your best, and the only thing you say is that your best just wasn’t good enough. You can hear the sound of something shattering and you can’t tell whether it’s on his side or yours. 

He says that you have so much more to learn, you have so much more time to turn your best into better. 

He won’t be there to teach you, but there’s a lingering promise that he’ll be back. 

Maybe not now, but hopefully in a few years. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! come talk to me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/sunarinchuu)


End file.
